HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL PREVIEWS : Measuring Up to Last Season May Be Impossible

The Angelus League was never better than last season when it placed four teams in the Southern Section 5-A playoffs, three in the semifinals and two, Mater Dei and Bishop Amat, in the final.

Mater Dei beat Bishop Amat, 74-65, to win its fourth consecutive 5-A championship.

Can the quality hope to measure up to last season?

Get real.

“What happened last season in the league is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing,” said Alex Acosta, Bishop Amat coach.

That may depend on what you call a lifetime. Still, Larry Walker, who returns to Servite after a year off, said last season’s league play was the best he has seen since he started coaching in 1967.

But good things tend not to last, witness two notable subtractions:

--The league lost a contender and probably its best player when St. Bernard, which lost to Mater Dei in the semifinals, moved to the Camino Real League, taking with it 6-foot 10-inch center Ed Stokes.

--Bishop Amat, which ended Mater Dei’s 55-game league winning streak and Mater Dei’s 5-year lock on the league title, lost just about everyone. That translates into its top six players, including 6-8 Jeff Lear, now at Pepperdine.

Another no-show is a consensus all-everything player. In this decade, the league has produced Matt Beeuswaert (Mater Dei, now at California), Tom Lewis (Mater Dei, Pepperdine), David Whitmore (St. Bernard, Georgia Tech), LeRon Ellis (Mater Dei, Kentucky) and Lear among others.

But this year, “There’s just no dominant player,” according to Acosta.

Given the absence of great players, league coaches believe overall program strength will win the league. And guess who that is?

“You have to pick Mater Dei,” said Mike Dineen, St. Paul coach. “They have (Dylan) Rigdon and (Mike) Morris and they always seem to have a 25-0 junior varsity team.”

St. Paul should be right there, though. The team that averaged 93 points a game figures to do the same amount of running and gunning this season.

Here’s a closer look:

BISHOP AMAT--Acosta lost a starting lineup that had played together for 4 seasons. He lost a dominant big man in Lear (20 points and 15 rebounds a game), outside shooting in Terry and Clarence Lamb and the exceptional athletic talents of Stephon Pace, who is at USC on a football scholarship.

“We’re not going to have a whole lot of things we had last season,” Acosta laments.

One of those things figures to be points. Last season’s team averaged 81 points a game, but Acosta doesn’t expect production like that this season.

“We’re going to break when we can,” Acosta said. “But the fact is we don’t have the athletes we had last season.”

They do have Pablo Patino (6-7) at the post and guard Loren Cannon, the second and third players off the bench last season. They also have a host of new players, the most promising being 6-4 junior Jason Green.

BISHOP MONTGOMERY--Starting at ground zero, and some may say below that, is first-year Coach Tony Carter, who takes over a program that did not win a league game last season.

Carter is short on age (27), but long on experience. He has been coaching for 10 years with jobs at Cal State Dominguez and Torrance and Compton high schools.

Carter has increased the program’s coaching staff from 4 to 9, 5 of which are volunteer assistants. He also created spring intramurals for every playing level, entered each level in two summer leagues and stressed weightlifting.

The varsity will have 6 underclassmen, most notable 6-4 junior forward Joe Magyar, and 6-2 freshman guard Joe Hadnot.

“The way I have to look at it the underclassmen and the lower divisions are my future,” Carter said.

MATER DEI--Yeah, yeah, they don’t rebuild, they just reload.

Mater Dei has won about a million games in the past few years, actually it’s 167-15 during the last 6 seasons. It had won 55 consecutive league games and 5 league championships in a row before Bishop Amat ended both those streaks last season.

Guard Dylan Rigdon, who has signed to attend UC Irvine and is one of the league’s best perimeter shooters, returns. Rigdon, whose nickname is 19-9, the 3-point line’s distance, won the free-throw shooting contest at Pittsburgh’s prestigious Five-Star Camp.

Swingman Mike Morris (6-5) started to come on during last season’s playoffs and was a major reason Mater Dei took the 5-A title after losing the league championship.

Morris’ development continued this summer and Mater Dei won the prestigious Bosco Tech tournament. Many believe he is the key to the team’s success.

Mater Dei, which had a starting lineup devoid of a true big man, will start 6-8 Derrick Stone, who figures to be solid in the middle.

ST. PAUL--This team might have the best chance of challenging Mater Dei. St. Paul averaged 93 points a game last season and Dineen promises more this season.

“We’d like to be a cross between Loyola Marymount and UC Irvine,” he said, which brings up all sorts of mathematical possibilities.

Returning are forwards Greg Willig (6-7) and John Overbeck (6-7), who averaged 17 and 10 points, respectively, and guard Jason Hart.

Hart led St. Paul’s casting corps, which averaged 7 three-pointers per game. His outside shooting was so valuable that when he missed the last 4 games of the regular season, St. Paul dropped all 4 games.

SERVITE--Walker said he watched Servite play last season periodically during his time off. What he saw was a team, traditionally noted for its defense, give up 70 or more points in 15 of its 23 games.

Walker promises a return to normalcy.

“What we’re going to do on offense is going to depend on who we’re playing,” he said. “But we’re going to play tough defense every game. We’re always going to do that.”

The core of the team is forward Steve Marusich (6-6) and guards Andy Kennedy and Chris Johnson.

They will have to make up for points lost by the graduation of guard Brian Kenney (21 points per game) and center Nick Marusich, Steve’s brother, who averaged 10 rebounds a game.

ANGELUS LEAGUE

1987-88 Overall, League Record in Parenthesis

SCHOOL ‘88-89 COMMENT Bishop Amat (23-2, 8-1) Loses starting lineup from last season’s 5-A finalist. Mater Dei (16-6, 7-2) 4-time defending 5-A champion is league favorite. St. Paul (16-6, 5-4) Could average 90-plus points per game again. St. Bernard (16-7, 5-4) Moved to the Camino Real League. Servite (12-10, 2-7) Coach Larry Walker returns after 1-year sabbatical. Bishop Montgomery (6-15, 0-9) New coach, new players, dismal recent past.